Page 73

Jubilee doesn’t rush to fill the silence the way most people do. She simply lays her hand over my forearm and waits. Unspoken gratitude tightens my throat.

“Nana gets the credit for the baking. I spent half my childhood in her kitchen with flour on my clothes and butter on my fingers. She loved Julia Child. Owned every one of her cookbooks.” A small laugh shakes through Jubilee’s back. “After everything happened, I baked more. Because when I put a cupcake or cream puff in front of my family, sometimes they smiled. For five minutes, somebody’s eyes would light up again, and that felt useful. So, I kept doing it.”

“And the pastries got more complicated,” she murmurs.

“The pastries got significantly more pretentious.” My fingers climb to the soft panes of her stomach while she traces my tattoos. “Eventually people started asking how I made them, so I filmed pieces of the process. Then my first cat decided the production needed more drama. Orange tabby with enough orange-cat energy to qualify as a controlled substance. He smacked a cupcake off the counter. I lunged for the cupcake, missed it completely, and caught him instead.”

Jubilee twists halfway around, eyes bright. “Please tell me that’s what went viral.”

“Millions of views. People wanted more baking, more cat, and apparently more footage of me scolding the cat. Everything grew from there.”

“An empire.”

I grimace. “Sounds douchey when you say it.”

“You have five million followers.”

“Fine. A tastefully managed empire.”

“Emphasis on tastefully.”

She settles back against me, and I resume tracing her belly. “Nana gave me the kitchen. Grandpa gave me the rest. He was a farmer. I collected eggs every morning and repaired fences so badly, he usually had to fix them again after me.” She giggles softly. “I wanted a killer kitchen and enough land for a chicken coop. So, when the business got big enough, I bought this place.”

She follows my gaze to the dark windows, to a little piece of my empire.

“All of it took time,” I add. “The business, the traveling, the events, my family. There wasn’t much left over for relationships.”

“But you did date.”

“I wasn’t raised in a monastery, Princess.”

“Could’ve fooled me sometimes.”

“Brat.” Her mouth curls, and I go on. “I had a girlfriend in high school, but only for a month before the…incident. Now and then, I’d date. Got far enough to know what I liked, but never far enough to want anyone inside the rest of my life. And if she’s not inside my life, I’m not inside her. So to speak.”

The irony isn’t lost on me. Jubilee is inside now. She’s commandeered my Persian, strangled my beams in fairy lights, and declared war on every coaster I own, and I’ve never let another woman get this far.

“Wait. Are you a virgin?”

My jaw sets. “I don’t subscribe to labels which define sexual experience by whether one body part penetrated another.”

She cranes her neck to me. “That was a very elaborate non-answer.”

“I’ve kissed. I’ve had sexual experiences, some chosen and some not. But penetrative sex? No.”

“Huh.” Her breath shivers. “So tonight was really your first time doing that?”

“Yes.”

“And you were that good?”

I shrug. “Someone else’s preferences wouldn’t tell me yours. I paid attention. And…” I trail off, my tone more solemn, “…you know what happened after the VIP event.”

Her hand slides along my forearm. She already knows the ugliest parts.

“After that, I decided relationships weren’t worth the trouble. I had my work, my family, and my fur babies.” I tighten my arm around her. “I was fine.”

I was, right up until a woman with dyed-black hair and bloody hands stared up at me beside a corpse and dismantled every carefully maintained system I had. My blood simmers with want, twitching my cock, but I stay in the moment and lift a hand to comb my fingers through her hair.